Microsoft Unveils their New Search Engine, Bing - Landon's Web Development Blog

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Microsoft Unveils their New Search Engine, Bing

Microsoft recently announced the release of their new search engine called Bing. At first glance, Microsoft's new search engine, bing, appears very similar to Google. There's a search bar across the top; a list of results down the middle of the page, and targeted advertisements above and to the right of the search results. However, for certain types of queries, Microsoft claims that bing will trump its competitors -- specifically market giant Google.

Microsoft describes the change as a focus on being a "decision engine" vs. a search engine. Jon Tinter, general manager of strategic partnerships in Microsoft's online audience business group, said the idea is to shift work from consumers to search engines, by answering more queries on the search results page, without having to click through to a result.

For example, if you search for "weather," Bing will use your IP address to figure out your location and display a forecast at the top of the results. Want to know if a flight's on time? Search the airline and flight number, and Bing will answer that query atop the search results rather than pull up a list of sites and links that can tell you.